


Desolation Row

by starcrossedgirl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Darkfic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Psychological Torture, prison!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-23
Updated: 2012-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-31 15:35:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/345739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starcrossedgirl/pseuds/starcrossedgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five stages of grief, prison!fic style. For warnings, please see notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Desolation Row

**Author's Note:**

> For justmehelen's prompt: desolation/warmth/hope. Goes off-canon after OoTP. Huge thanks to andinocara and abrae for extremely swift betas!
> 
>  
> 
> **Warnings (highlight to view):**
> 
> underage (Harry is 17), angst, dark themes, psychological torture, ambiguous character death with a hopeful ending

Harry thought he knew desolation. Desolation smelt musty and stale, like doxy-tattered curtains of ages past; it tasted like weak cups of tea, prepared by grey hands that would rather tear than serve. Desolation sounded like pacing footsteps, echoing against too-tight walls; it looked like dark hallways with heads mounted on plaques.

Desolation was Grimmauld Place. Desolation was talking to Nearly Headless Nick and knowing that Sirius had left, as he’d been left in that house.

The truth, though, is this: Harry didn’t know desolation at all.

Not until the day they threw him into the cell.

\---

On the first day, he vibrates from fear to hope.

“He’ll be here any minute,” he says, as soon as he’s hit the ground. “There’s no way that bitch won’t call him instantly. What the fuck are we going to do?”

There is no response. But the hours trickle by, as the mould trickles down the bare stone walls, and Voldemort never appears. The only thing that does arrive are two small wooden bowls of thin gruel, pushed beneath the bars by a figure that swiftly departs.

“Wait!” Harry says, when Snape lifts one to his lips. “It might be poisoned!”

“It’s not poisoned,” Snape says. He sounds almost bored. “Poison is for eliminating enemies amidst their own ranks, safely ensconced in their home. They already have us, Potter.” He shakes his head. “No, it won’t be poison. Avada Kedavra, if we are lucky. Crucio, perhaps. Or --”

“Fine, fine!” Harry says. “I’ll drink it.”

He tries not to think too hard on the bucket in the far corner, as he does. Mercifully, the gruel is more liquid than anything else, so perhaps that’s one indignity spared.

“They’ll find us,” he says, a little while later. “Dumbledore, the rest of the Order, they’ll figure it out. They’ll come.”

Snape doesn’t move from where he sits, back pressed against the wall, fingers clasped loosely around his legs. In the waning light an errant sunbeam spills gold-pink through the small window and over his cheek; he smiles.

\---

On the second day, Harry springs into action.

The window -- the hole in the wall, more like -- is the obvious solution, but it’s too high, even if Snape were to lift him. It’s too small, even without the lattice of steel covering it that Harry noticed yesterday.

He finds a rusty nail, stuck in a plank of wood, wiggles and wiggles and wiggles it inside the lock.

“A little help would be appreciated,” he says, when it refuses to budge. 

Snape sighs, just a little. “It’s a magically locked door, Potter, and warded, to boot.”

Harry drops the nail to the floor. “What if... what if I pretend to be ill, so the guard will come in? Then you can go for his wand and, you know.” He waves his hand.

Snape’s eyebrow lifts. “And you imagine that the Death Eaters would care, why precisely?”

“Well, we’re still here, aren’t we? They could have killed us ages ago, but instead they’ve just got us stuck in this... room.”

“Yes,” Snape says, very softly. “I believe it’s called torture.”

Something inside Harry bubbles up; he pushes it down. Clearly Snape’s just determined to be useless. “Fine then,” he says. “I’ll, I’ll... I’ll dig us out!”

It seems so obvious, once he’s made the connection. The ground is compacted earth, after all, cold and unpleasantly damp. Harry tears a hole into it with his fingers, close to the wall, scrapes layer after layer loose to dig deeper. Small stones catch at his knuckles, scrape them raw; the earth is hard, unforgiving. Blisters build on the soft edges of skin, then pop open; they sting, but Harry’s determined, pausing only to cover the hole with his body when footsteps signal their dinner.

By nightfall, he’s arm-length deep. His muscles burn and his fingers bleed freely, now, but he digs just a little deeper, a little more, until...

He meets solid rock.

He’s still staring uncomprehendingly into the black, when he hears Snape shift, across the room.

“Did you really think it would be that easy?” he asks.

Harry doesn’t respond. He drinks his cold gruel, then sinks to the ground, the ground resting on stone.

\---

On the third day, the rage swallows him up.

He throws himself against the bars of his cage, rattles them, punches them until his bones tremble, frail in their lining of sinew and blood.

“Come here, you fuckers!” he shouts. “Why don’t you just finish it, already? Too fucking scared, is that it? Afraid I won’t die like I’m supposed to? You’re cowards, the whole bloody lot of you! You especially, Tom! You’re vermin, you’re scum, and I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you as soon as I’m out!”

He shouts until he is hoarse. When he chances a glance over at Snape, he’s still sitting there, black hair lining his face, lip curved upwards. He’s smiling, the bastard, like this is amusing, when Harry is starving, black hole for a stomach to match the one in the ground.

Harry flies at him. _Your fault_ , he thinks in some far corner of his mind, but he no longer has words for his anger, just this ball at his centre, knotted and tight. He only has screams, high-pitched and loud. He punches at Snape, tears at his robes; he kicks, bites and scratches, pushes and pulls.

Snape shoves him away, again, again and once more, until he loses his patience. Then he backhands Harry so hard he lands -- crack -- on the floor, jaw throbbing, eyes burning, chest heaving.

Harry watches Snape for a long minute, the quickened pace of his breaths, how his eyes narrow to slits, as though he might speak, as though he might... feel some emotion. In the end, though, he just folds himself back up in his usual position, knees to his chest, face smooth and placid.

Harry goes back to the door. At least, so he reasons, if somebody comes, there’s a chance this will finish. Fighting Snape will only bring him more pain.

The anger burns hot through the night, burns him to shards, until he collapses, weary, exhausted.

\---

On the fourth day, he’d sell his soul to the devil.

“He must want something,” he says. Each word is a knife in his throat, cutting it open where he screamed vocal cords raw. “You know him better than anyone, so what the hell -- what’s his plan?”

Snape flicks a speck of dirt off his fingernail. “I wouldn’t hazard a guess. I’ve made a habit of keeping the Dark Lord from invading my thoughts; delving into the the landscape of his private obsessions is another matter altogether. Besides --” he tilts his head -- “what would you give him? The secret locations of safehouses? Dumbledore’s strategies, weak spots in our armour?”

Until the fourth day, Harry thought he would never, could not even contemplate the idea.

He still wouldn’t, he tells himself. He couldn’t; it isn’t in him -- not for a warm meal, a hot shower, a soft, fluffy duvet --

“I don’t know any of those, anyway,” he says.

“No,” Snape agrees. His gaze pierces Harry’s eyes, slipping through latches of trapdoors to the murky green underneath. “Thank Merlin for small favours.”

Harry casts his eyes down. Shame is as potent as anger, it seems.

When their dinner arrives, carried not by the usual faceless guard but Lucius Malfoy, he can’t help it. He’s cold and he hurts and he’s hungry, so Snape must be, too -- Snape, who knows all those secrets he mentioned, who blends into desolation as though it’s his skin.

Snape, who, unlike Harry, isn’t a traitor at heart.

The shame laughs at his pride, drinks it down in one gulp. “Please,” Harry says, on his knees, grasping the bars. “Please, at least let him go. It’s me that you want, and you’ve got me. I’ll do whatever you want me to do, anything. I won’t fight.”

Malfoy smiles, his teeth glinting like a hyena’s. “Bargaining. How very sweet.” He glances over at Snape. “To judge by your lip, we’ve already passed rage?”

Snape gazes back placidly.

“Regardless,” Malfoy says, “as charming as watching the two of you may be, I’m here for a purpose. Have you considered our proposal?”

If Malfoy’s smile is a hyena’s, then Snape’s is a shark’s, smeared red by dried blood which Harry put there with his own hands. “Go to hell, Lucius.”

Malfoy appears unconcerned. “A little while longer, then,” he says, trailing lily-white fingers over steel bars. “Do enjoy dinner. And please -- do feel free to call the guard when you change your mind.”

In his wake there is silence, until Harry at last finds his tongue. “Proposal,” he says, remembering flashes from when they arrived, Lucius’ lips close to Snape’s ear. “They do want something, then, just not from me, they want --”

“Information which I can provide,” Snape says, retrieving his bowl and settling back against the wall. “That much should be obvious.”

Perhaps it’s the hunger making Harry’s thoughts sluggish and slow; he feels a little lightheaded. “I don’t get it. This is your chance, surely. Pretend you’re on board, and you can try and make a run for it! Or... or play them, or --”

Snape stops sipping his gruel. “Potter,” he says, “I killed five of their men in addition to Bellatrix Lestrange, before they captured my wand. Do you honestly think they would not take precautions, that they’d give me the slightest opportunity to fight, let alone flee? Do you honestly think they’d believe anything that I say, without testing it, first? I lie, they find out, and they kill me. I tell the truth and I’ve outlived my use. I tipped my hand and now the game’s over; I’ve no more plays left. Besides --” and there’s that smile, once again -- “the moment I open my mouth, they’ll kill you.”

Harry stares, uncomprehending; Snape’s smile flickers, then dies. “You really don’t understand, do you?” he says. He sounds tired and maybe it’s just a trick of the light, but Harry thinks he sees bruises, black hollows smudged under Snape’s eyes. “You are nothing but leverage. They know they can’t break me, so they’re making me watch as you break, instead.”

\---

On the fifth day, Harry cries. He wakes up already sobbing -- not that he slept, in the true sense of the word -- and then he can’t for the life of him stop. Each time he thinks he’s exhausted himself a new wave builds somehow to rip him in two; it hurts worse than the hunger. Each tears wells from the bone-dry emptiness at his core, paradoxical and unreal, but perhaps that is the real measure of magic: it creates something from nothing.

Or perhaps he’s just lost it.

He knows that it’s stupid, knows that crying doesn’t solve anything, knows that it plays right into their hands. If they want him to break, he should stay like the ground that laps up his tears, cold and impassive. He should smile instead of crying -- he should not make Snape watch this.

Not that Snape seems to care. He’s so still Harry could almost forget he is there, were it not for the knowledge that he carved into Harry the night before: were he not here, Harry would cease to exist. Harry alone is of no use, any longer; he’s a mere extension of Snape.

“Oh do cease your snivelling,” Snape says, long after time has lost any meaning.

 _I’m seventeen,_ Harry thinks, _I’m seventeen years old and I’m going to die. The least you could do is show me some empathy._

Hell, the least Snape could do would be to sound angry, rather than bored.

But Snape’s like the ground; he’s cold and impassive.

Harry cries.

\---

Perhaps it’s the sixth day already, perhaps the cusp of the fifth. All Harry knows is that at some point during the night the weather has turned; blasts of ice howl through the window, shuddering down to the ground. Before, the cold covered him like a gossamer blanket; now it threads into every muscle, chatters his teeth until the rhythm takes over everything, steals even the sobs from his lips. 

Strange, how one sound can be met with blank disapproval, and yet the next provokes action. Maybe it’s simply the final straw; when Snape picks him up and draws him into his arms, Harry decides it hardly matters. He shivers as Snape settles them against the far wall, shivers under Snape’s cloak wrapping around him, but as the glacier melts just a little the sadness builds up anew. He chokes a whimper into Snape’s robes, pressing close to his chest, and Snape shushes him softly, runs fingers over the curve of his skull.

“Please,” Harry says, “say something. Anything, I don’t care what, just... just speak to me.”

For a moment, the silence hangs over them, thickly. Then Snape’s hand shifts to draw circles in the small of Harry’s back. “They’re selling postcards of the hanging,” he murmurs, and Harry bursts into laughter, cutting him off.

“Really?” he says, raising his head. “That’s... you’re special, you know that?”

Snape lifts an eyebrow, though his mouth is a dark shadowed line. “It’s Muggle poetry. You did say anything.”

Harry slumps back against his chest; the hilarity has already fled. “Go on, then.”

He loses track of the words. They don’t make much sense to him anyway, fragments of pictures that won’t form a whole, so he listens to the rough sway of Snape’s voice, soothing, yet not quite enough. His fingers migrate of their own will up past Snape’s collar, finding his pulse and that’s a little better, the dull thud reverberating in tune with Snape’s words, until they draw to a close.

“Promise me you won’t give in,” Harry says, into the silence. “Don’t leave me. No matter how bad things get, promise that you won’t go.”

Snape’s fingers still over his back; for a brief moment, they press into his skin. “You’ll change your mind later.”

“I don’t care. Don’t let me. I can’t do this if you don’t -- promise, you have to, please, promise you’ll stay, promise --”

“Shhh,” Snape says, stroking his hair, “I promise.”

“Till the end.”

“Till the end.”

Something splits Harry’s chest; it might be relief; it might be despair. And then he can’t help it, though it makes less sense than the poem -- he surges up, finds Snape’s lips with his own, tries to kiss him.

Snape pulls him back, holding him fast by his hair, and for a moment, Harry is sure that the next word from his lips will be _No_. Then something flashes over his face, too quick to grasp as an expression, and he pulls Harry in, opens him up, unlocks his lips with his tongue.

It should be disgusting. Snape smells much like Harry probably does, stale sweat over dust over grime; his stubble burns Harry’s chin. His breath tastes acrid with a sickly sweet tinge, his split lip like burnt pennies, cloying and rough. It should be disgusting for all of these reasons and because this is Snape, but he’s warm and he’s alive, pulse quickening against Harry’s skin; he’s warm and he’s here and he promised to stay till the end. Harry wants nothing so much as to crawl into him, fuse them, lose himself and their cell. He fumbles at Snape’s robes, but his fingers, stiff-swollen with pain just trip over buttons. Snape takes over, unfastens their trousers, taking them both in one hand, coaxes them to full hardness and beyond. The dry friction chafes and it hurts and it’s perfect, Snape’s heat against him; Harry’s body is singing and breaking until he’s dizzy, lightheaded, until he’s sobbing into Snape’s mouth and the world sinks from grey into black.

\---

When he wakes up, he’s flat on his back. The first thing that registers is the pain at his wrist, the next that he can’t move, pinned down by immovable weight. He opens his eyes, frantic, but it’s not the Death Eater above him that he expects -- it’s Snape.

Snape who’s holding him down, Snape who’s stripped him bare to the waist, Snape who’s digging a rusty nail into his skin. Harry’s pretty sure it’s the same one he tried to use to open the door.

“What the fuck are you doing? Let me go, you bastard, let me --”

“Shush,” Snape says, and slices him open. Harry bites off the cry that flies to his lips, jerking beneath under Snape, but it’s useless -- his right arm’s twisted under his back, his left bleeding freely. Harry watches, dumbstruck, as Snape lifts it above the small earthenware bowl, his eyes following the stream of red that trickles into the cloudy, white-speckled liquid already inside. Every time the flow slows, Snape cuts straight through the clots until Harry fears that it simply won’t end, that Snape’s aim is to bleed him out as slowly and painfully as possible.

Eventually, though, he seems satisfied, setting the bowl aside. He bends down and Harry tries to headbutt him, tries to throw him off. Unfortunately, Snape seems to expects it, lifts with the movement and flips Harry over, tying his arms behind his back.

“Why?” Harry says, when he’s on his back once again, Snape sat astride his legs in a mockery of intimacy. “Why are you doing this to me, what... I don’t understand, last night you were...”

God, he sounds pathetic even to himself.

Snape’s only response is a smile as he sprinkles a handful of earth into the bowl. He dips two fingers in, stirring the mixture, then paints an edged line beneath Harry’s right collarbone.

Harry knows it as magic from the first touch, but he also knows it is _wrong_. It crawls under his skin, seems to burn through its layers like a poisonous plant taking root, even the pain of his wrist recedes to the background. He bucks like a wild beast, managing to get his shoulders off the ground before Snape slams him back down.

“No,” he pants, “please, no, just stop it, just stop it, why won’t you --”

“Quiet,” Snape snaps. His eyes are as dark as the magic, fathomless, obscure. “You want to know why? Because you’re a fool, Potter. Because this is what I do best, what I’ve always excelled at -- I find ways to survive when there are no options left. Shame about you, but that’s how the world works, I’m afraid. Now kindly shut up.”

And then he’s drawing more symbols, and even if Harry could think of a response he wouldn’t be able to speak; he can only whimper through the black haze which sinks into his every last crevice, eating him up. He loses track of time -- minutes might pass though it feels like eternity, each line of blood on his body another agony, another tendril snaking down to his core, fusing with his own magic to pollute all that is him.

Just when he thinks it can’t possibly get worse, when Snape is finally done, he’s lifted again. The bowl is rough against his lips and he closes them firmly, but Snape pinches his nose until he gives in and gasps, and then the liquid’s sliding down his throats in heavy clots: blood and piss and dirt and semen. He gags and he chokes but Snape’s unrelenting, holds his mouth open and his head back, forcing him to swallow; it burns even worse from the inside.

This time the world doesn’t fade so much as slam into black.

\---

“...would have expected you to hold out a touch longer, to be honest. But it’s sensible of you to --”

Harry blinks.

“-- see reason. Did you know that it was I who suggested this tactic to the Dark Lord, in the first instance?”

His vision returns in blurred snatches: Lucius’ hair, the expanse of Snape’s back turned towards him from where he stands, still inside the cell. Harry tries to glance at his own chest, but finds himself fully dressed.

“I regret that I have to disappoint you, then,” Snape says. “I’m not complying to spare Potter.”

“Oh?”

“Oh no. You see, I’ve discovered... unanticipated assets. As a matter of fact, I believe the Dark Lord will wish to hear about them in person.”

“You bastard!” Harry shouts, stumbling to his feet. They give out on the first go, but he makes it halfway through the room before Lucius freezes him with a flick of his wand. His gaze flicks from Harry to Snape, then back. Snape doesn’t even bother to turn his head, merely lifting his hands, palm to palm, forearm to forerarm.

“I believe you are required to bind me.”

“Yes,” Lucius says, sounding rather absentminded, as though he can’t work out the puzzle.

Harry can’t either, can only watch coils of glowing gold sink over Snape’s wrists and ankles. He doesn’t need all the pieces to feel the betrayal, echoing dully in his throbbing arm. “You promised!” he says, because words are all he has left, stuck to the ground and unable to move, to follow his hands where they want him to go. “You fucking promised, you son of a bitch, you swore you wouldn’t leave me!”

Snape turns his head as he steps through the door, the lattice of bars cutting his face into stripes. His lips curl; he smiles.

Then the lock snicks into place and Harry’s alone, able to move. He throws himself at the door, shouts abuse long past the corridor’s empty. There’s a chasm inside him, full of corroded barbed wire, oozing black trails into his veins. He’s still rattling the bars when it surges into a wave, all of a sudden, and then the wire tears him into pieces, rips him to shreds, as he shatters apart.

\---

He wakes up shrouded in softness.

His first conscious thought is that this must be heaven; he feels comfortable, enveloped in warmth and pleasantly rested, clean, as though he’s taken a bath. He presses his cheek into the smooth weave of cotton, and that strikes him as odd -- surely heaven shouldn’t come with pillows, nor with the pyjamas he appears to be wearing. On reflection, once he’s opened his eyes, heaven looks suspiciously like the Burrow, and that makes so little sense that he moves from drowsy to fully awake in an instant. He finds his glasses -- no longer smudged and stained but gleaming -- on the bedside table, but even with the world fully focused the facts do not change.

He’s alive.

He stares at his reflection in the mirror across the room, disbelieving. Perhaps, he thinks dizzily, with a faint edge of hysteria, perhaps it was all an incredibly messed up dream. Just a nightmare.

Something still rests inside him, though, less like wire now, more like wafting curls of smoke. The memory brings a shiver of disgust, swiftly followed by anger and confusion.

He should not be alive.

He crawls out of the bed on shaky legs, walking towards the mirror. The buttons of his pyjama top pop open one by one, slowly; he’s not sure what he fears more: seeing nothing or...

The symbols stare back at him, stark black on white skin. Except that’s not right, because they’re not _on_ him, any longer; when he rubs one with his finger, it doesn’t come off. No, they’re etched into him seamlessly, sharp jagged lines that look vaguely familiar, though he cannot recall where he’s seen them before. He turns slightly and the light reflects off them and they’re no longer solid black, either, but a deep, shimmering red.

“You’re up!”

He startles, turning to see Hermione in the open doorway, holding a tray. She sets it down on the bed and in the next moment envelops him in a hug. “Oh, it’s so good to see you awake,” she says, squeezing him tightly, and then, “I should let the others know.”

He holds her by the arm as she pulls back, shaking his head. “No, please, not yet. What... what happened?”

She hovers, clearly uncertain. “We were hoping you might be able to clear some of that up. You and Snape, you were captured, and we couldn’t find you, until two days ago when you suddenly appeared out of nowhere, right in the kitchen. You wouldn’t remember that part; you were unconscious.” Her eyes flicker down to his chest, then back up at him. “Did... did Snape do those?”

Harry nods weakly.

“Right. That proves that theory then. Look, I should really --”

“What _are_ they? What do they mean? He didn’t -- I don’t understand.”

Hermione frowns. “They’re runes,” she says. “I don’t fully... Dumbledore will be able to explain better. He’s not in, at the moment, but he should be back before too long.”

“Can’t you at least give me the gist?”

Hermione shifts her weight from one foot to the other, then relents, pulling him down to perch on the edge of the bed. “You must understand that I don’t have the full picture, but even with it, it’s a little hard to interpret. This stuff’s old magic -- Dumbledore reckons the medium must have been blood, although that doesn’t make complete sense, because spells of this nature usually require more than one type of, uhm, bodily fluid. The other one’s normally --”

Harry bites his lip and stares at the duvet.

“Right,” Hermione says, and when Harry dares to look up, faint splotches of pink bloom on her cheeks. “Regardless, the thing is, you can only ever translate runes in context, because each one has multiple meanings.”

“But you can guess, based on what happened.”

“Yes,” Hermione says. “At least somewhat. Laguz and Raigo, for example --” she points at two symbols which are drawn multiple times -- “can both signify journeys, or travel. But Laguz can also refer to gains made at the expense of a loss. Algiz and Thurisaz probably mean protection, in this case. Teiwaz is all about bravery in adverse conditions, including a noble death.”

Harry is liking the sound of this less by the minute; the sinking feeling in his stomach reminds him uncomfortably of guilt.

“Gyfu means gifts, though not necessarily material ones, but also sacrifices made on behalf of another, and Ur’s, uhm, sexual energy, usually. But it’s also about tests and cycles -- the end of a dark period giving rise to something new, unpredictable power. Isa intensifies all the runes that it borders, and finally Pertho is... a rune of revelation. It’s all about things not being quite as they seem.”

Well, that bloody fits. Harry closes his eyes, swallowing against the lump that fills up his throat.

“It’s obviously a translocation spell; it’s what got you here. Dumbledore seems to think that Snape linked your magic somehow, that he gave you some of his. Not sure of the origin of the surge of power that must have been necessary to get you here, but --”

“Last I saw him, he let himself be taken off to see Voldemort.”

“Oh,” Hermione says.

For a long moment, they sit in silence. Then Hermione runs a hand down his back.

“Are you okay?”

Her fingers are much smaller than Snape’s. “Yeah,” Harry says, blinking moisture out of his eyes as he opens them, and aims for a smile. “I just need a minute.”

She nods, getting up. “There’s some soup on the tray, if you want it. I’ll let the others know you’re awake.”

“Hermione,” Harry says, as she’s almost out of the door. He points to his chest, when she turns to look at him, to the blank square amidst edges of crimson black. “What does _this_ mean?”

She hesitates, visibly. “It’s the unknowable. The factors which can’t be controlled, can’t even be guessed at. Fate, if you will.”

Harry gazes at himself in the mirror for a very long time, after she’s left.

\---

“Without question,” Dumbledore says later, after Harry’s recounted the whole sorry tale. There’s not the hint of a twinkle in his eye. “He used his own death to ricochet you right back to us, like a slingshot. He was always ingenious, Severus.”

\---

The reeds outside the Burrow are covered in ice, translucent frost clinging to them. The cold has made them brittle; a sharp gust of wind breaks them clean in the centre. Harry shivers, watching them.

He supposes he should feel desolation, right now. After all, Dumbledore sounded so certain and every last ounce of Harry’s reason is forced to agree.

But Harry has a space carved over his heart, and deep down he feels like it might not be so unknowable.

He closes his eyes and listens to the quiet susurration of Snape’s magic inside his veins, dark liquor merging with his own.

He closes his eyes and listens, and listens, and waits for the pull.

**Author's Note:**

> Snape's Muggle poetry is actually [the Bob Dylan song this story is named after](http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/desolation-row).


End file.
